Getting to Grips with the Bible
If we are going to help young people engage effectively with the Bible, we first need to get to grips with it ourselves. We need to know why we should trust the Bible and have a good grasp on the overarching story. We not only need to know our way around the Bible but we also need to know how to study it and how to understand the different types of literature found within it. Here are a variety of books which will help you get to grips with the Bible.
Everything you want to know about the Bible [Peter Downey & Ben Shaw]
This book provides an extremely readable introduction to the Bible. Its humorous style makes it an engaging read and the anecdotal stories help bring this guidebook to life. The authors cover a great deal of ground in a clear and concise manner giving the reader an excellent foundation of where the Bible has come from. The second half of the book provides an outline and extremely readable overview of the biblical story.
Dig Deeper - Tools to unearth the Bible's treasures [N. Beynon and A. Sach]
This book is designed be a ‘toolbox’. It’s full of ‘tools’ that will enable you to understand the Bible more fully and help you apply what it says to your life. ‘Tools’ in this ‘toolbox’ include, ‘the author’s purpose tool’, ‘the structure tool’ ‘the linking words tool’, ‘the translations tool’ and ‘the “so what?” tool’. For each ‘tool’ there is also a worked example – so you don’t just read about the ‘tool’, you also get to see it in action.
God's Big Picture [Vaughan Roberts]
One of the main reasons why many people find the Bible such a difficult book to understand is that they haven’t got a grasp of the ‘big picture’. This is why Vaughan Roberts wrote this book! It provides a clear overview explaining how the different parts of the Bible fit together under the theme of the kingdom of God. The framework provided in this book will help you approach the Bible (even the most difficult passages) with much more confidence.
Why Trust the Bible? [Amy Orr-Ewing]
This book looks at ten of the most common questions people ask about the Bible. For example, “Isn’t it all a matter of interpretation?”, “Are the biblical manuscripts reliable?”, “What about he canon?”, “Isn’t the Bible sexist?” and “What about all the war?”. This book is written in an easy-to-read style, but at the same time manages to explore each question in considerable depth and with academic rigour.
How to Read the Bible for All It's Worth [Gordon D. Fee & Douglas Stuart]
Since this book was first published in 1981 it has become the ‘benchmark’ guide to interpreting the different types of literature found in the Bible. The third edition of this book is as comprehensive and thorough as previous ones but several chapters have been re-written for better readability. It seeks to help readers understand the meaning of the text for its original audiences along with the implications for us today.
User's Guide to the Bible [Stephen M. Miller]
This guidebook takes you through the Bible in a similar way to how a tourist guide book takes you through a country. This book contains useful background information along with a brief overview of each book. Each overview contains a summary of the book in a paragraph, details on when it was written and who wrote it, a list of main characters, a description of the biggest scene, and the most famous line.
The Bible Book - A User's Guide [Nick Page]
This is the most detailed Bible guidebook recommended here. However, its ‘user-friendly’ layout makes it very easy to ‘dip-into-and-out-of’. After a brief introductory section the remainder of the book (365 pages out of 399) works through each book in turn, providing an outline of the key themes and lots of useful background information. This book aims to be informal, but informed, simple but never simplistic. I think it achieves this aim.
